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Well, either that, or Little Big Planet is taking a really grim direction for a sequel. I wake up to a mass of mails from this – FinalSin was first, but cheers to you all – which shows how much even a sliver of information on Bioshock 2 excites people. I suspect we’re reaching the point when a lot more is going to be forthcoming soon. But while we wait, we’ve got some clues on this teaser site to pick over. It’s a map, with a series of faux-press clippings pinned to it and a mark on the West of Ireland. Presumably, we’re going to get more marks and more evidence as the month goes by. But what to make of it all?
The west of Ireland position suggests to me that we’re going to get more of these in a vague circle around wherever they’re going to be having their new city – a quasi Atlantis in the middle of the Atlantic would be my bet. The doll is clearly inspired by a Big Daddy. The newspaper clipping tells of a little girl being kidnapped at night by someone able to run at unnatural speed even though carrying a seven year old. He was “thin above average height and wore some kind of ‘Red light'” which appeared to be coming from his head. While police think he was wearing a miner’s helmet, I suspect there’s another explanation. The note from the beach-comber is linking the first two pieces of evidence together – that the toy was found on the beach previously, and it seems to resemble the kidnapper a little. After all, it appears to be a helmet and they could be boots and… well, J.Lynch is dismissed as a nut in red ink by whomever received the mail. Two other minor things there – it starts with “Intrigued by your speculation re: connection betw: footprints + kidnapping”. In other words, whoever received the letter has been doing some speculation of their own. I suspect it’s whoever’s maintaining the actual map itself, and we’ll get their commentary again. Secondly, we have a date. March 18th 1967.

Though Release Me went into Number 1 the week after – meaning what people were buying after the psychic fallout was actually old Humperdinck. Which could prove something, but probably doesn’t.

Anyway – what can we tell about it? Well, the immediate thought is a new Big Daddy… but the high-speed thing is already within the Big Daddy’s abilities. The only new feature is the fact he was described as “thin”. In terms of speculation, I think we’re heading into a “Big Daddy’s Without Kids, Go Forth To Get Them” sort of thing. But why? And where? And whom? And how? All will be revealed, unless they decide to end Bioshock 2 on a cliffhanger like bastards.

@diebroken, Site B?! They’re not going to pull a Jurassic Park 2 on us are they? Although I would be amused by a company abducting a Big Daddy and then said daddy going on a rampage in the downtown of some city (let’s say, New York).

what was wrong with the second half of bioshock? the where you got hurt every now and then was a bti shit, but er… yeah, i thought the whole thing except the final boss was really good. And even that was fun if short.

My bet, if we are to speculate on the evidence so far, is that after our hero saved all the little sisters in the first game, the inhabitants left are now kidnapping girls to convert them into little sisters. Or going with the teaser from the PS3 version they are re-kidnapping the escapen little sisters!

The final act of BioShock is still good, I reckon, but it’s disappointing because it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Because SPOILERCENTRAL…

…the whole game revolves around the notion that “you can never be free until you realise you aren’t.” That’s the point of the Ryan sequence, and why it’s so clever to utilise such a narrative device in a linear FPS. But then you *do* realise you aren’t free, yet you still can’t be – because it’s still a linear FPS.

If it had opened out into something more hub-based and open-plan after that, it’d have been truly remarkable. What’s crushing is it seems like such a gaping chasm in the fiction.

…In other words, while technically just as strong, by the end BioShock starts to undermine its own philosophy.

@Malagate: I’m thinking it’ll involve a secret undersea lab that was a part of Rapture, where experiments are being continued by it’s own hive mind (similar to the original story of BioShock?). Your character is investigating a local case (similar to Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth?) of a missing child near the ocean (one that has also occurred around the world). You soon find yourself caught up in a ‘haul’ back to the undersea lab itself after an initial (failed) battle with a scout/harvesting Big Daddy!

That’s what I loved about Bioshock, it’s near-cynical pastiche of gaming conventions. We do things because we’re told to do them, driven purely by this compulsion all the way through. Would you kindly pick up the red key? Would you kindly approach the red door? Would you kindly proceed to the next checkpoint? (seriously, try NOT going towards a checkpoint in a game like GTA. Try NOT following that great big arrow that leads to the next bit of content) Would you kindly?

And even if you never truly break from this curse, exchanging one master for another, only slightly more pleasant one, you at least get to do something nice for a bunch of little girls, and THEY get to experience free will at least.

Well there is always hope that 2K will make numero two something more than a mediocre FPS with really good art direction and an interesting story. Like…like…a PROPER spiritual sequel to the System Shocks.

Stop saying “would you kindly”, you are making me pick up keys and approach doors!

I’d really like it if you are a misable, deadbeat, down-on-his-luck Lovecraftian PI with nothing left to lose and you get drawn into a mystery re. missing girls (reluctantly at first) and gradually become obsessed and end up on chartering a dodgy old trawler with the last of your savings so you can sail about Ahab-like tracking down big daddies who have got lonely after being abandoned in the slowly imploding city of rapture with no little sisters to protect and they start kidnapping the girls and pretending they are sisters. You stumble on one of the entrances to the city and descend. There is no adam left in Rapture (so you can’t rely on fancy tricks to survive) since the sisters departed and the city is rapidly depressurizing and extremely hazardous so the only way to survive is to get big daddified yourself. You are able to get the children into the last bathysphere and send them to the surface but are unable to escape yourself, leaving you to witness the spectacular final moments of rapture’s collapse (which ryan probably recorded a suitable dramatic emergency broadcast for) with the melancholy big daddies. You don’t mind that you have essentially gone on a suicide mission because rescuing the girls enables you to achieve redemption of your hitherto seedy and morally grey life, and getting so close to their plight gives you a lot of sympathy for the plight of the abandoned big daddies.

I feel validated. Ironically, despite sending this in to you, I’m not looking forward to it that much. I’m just a bit worried that this assumption on two sequels and a film will lead to some pretty crazy plots. This is set seven years after Bioshock, I think? So we’re looking at the ex-Little Sisters being abducted again or something?

It’s too early to say, I know. But I like to start the cynicism engine up early, and keep it purring.

@diebroken, ahhh, that would be a lot better. See the moment you mentioned “site B” just put me instantly in mind of Jurassic Park 2 which was set on their “site B”. The memories of downtown T-Rex and velociraptors being defeated by gymnastics are far too hard to erase :-(

Also I’m with Eyemessiah on that, curse you crappy reality of Bioshock ending!

My main concern is that BioShock seemed to be the sort of narrative that screams “DO NOT MAKE A SEQUEL!” It’s so microcosmic and self-contained that trying to replicate it in a new setting, or even a different period of time, just seems wrong from the off.

A *prequel* would have worked, especially if they’d gone down a more Deus Exy route with proper NPC interaction, exploring the world Rapture once was, perhaps in the tension leading up to the civil war, or something. That would be a great game. Seems like it’s just my pipedream, though.

@Kast Intriguing indeed! Perhaps the abandoned rapture is on the brink of atomic disaster? I’d prefer high pressure implosion personally, but you can’t really go wrong with a 50s era nuclear apocalypse.

Also, I’d just like to say how disappointed I was when BS1 didn’t follow through with the big daddification process being permanent. Being rebuilt as a monster to stop the bad guy and the suggestion that you were being manipulated and that there would be no way back was one of the strongest themes in the final act imo, especially as it moved you even closer to the big daddies, whom despite being one of the most significant foes were very very sympathetic.

Someone on RPS described killing them as being a much more significant moral event than dealing with the sisters themselves and I couldn’t agree more, they were difficult to kill in more ways than one.

At about the half way point in the game when I realized I was regularly shooting up plasmids and running about doing crazy stuff and had bees living in my hand I was scared to see myself in a mirror because I was worried that I had quietly lost my mind and become splicerised and would be wearing a feathered party mask or somesuch.

The whole descent into madness and manipulation thing was so absorbing and the process of deliberate dehumanisation by being transformed into a big daddy fit really well, and sadly wasn’t capitalised on in the final moments (but then what was?).

Its a shame because it would have made excellent fodder for a bittersweet ending that would have suited the game much better than a boss fight and a YOUR GOOD slash YOUR EVIL ending movie.

Still, great game – looking forward to the sequel immensely, even if its not the same team.

it’s clearly the player from the original game who’s doing the kidnapping which is why it seems to be a big daddy without it’s suit, maybe he went nuts or maybe the little sisters want to go back and he’s just helping out :/

Couple of questions:
-Are we certain that the sightings of the Big Daddies and the skinny man are the same thing? Could the skinny chap not be a splicer?
-Where was Rapture? Wasn’t it in the middle of the Atlantic anyway? Therefore isn’t this just the ruined remains of Rapture breaking out into the rest of the world? Splicer’s stealing normal kids to try and restart the Little Sisters/Big Daddy thing so that the Adam will flow?

That aside I too was staggeringly disappointed with Bioshock. On a comparative scale with its predecessor it simply does not hold up. No matter how pretty and intriguing the scenery may be it is just a totally linear, utterly bog-standard corridor shooter underneath. The amount of weapons you had (and plasmids) was just ludicrous; I felt like I was playing Serious Sam in the end.

That aside, still hopeful for the sequel. Hopefully they will flesh this one out a bit more and give us an actual game rather than a Half Life clone (And give us decent character models: the ones in the first game were just terrible, particularly in contrast to the lovely scenery)

…In other words, while technically just as strong, by the end BioShock starts to undermine its own philosophy.

These were my thoughts exactly. The philosophy of freedom (or rejection of slavery) espoused by Bioshock was undermined by its inherent FPS rail. I absolutely loved the game, but found this enormously vexing (“wait, I’m a Big Daddy and DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE?!”).

My main concern is that BioShock seemed to be the sort of narrative that screams “DO NOT MAKE A SEQUEL!” It’s so microcosmic and self-contained that trying to replicate it in a new setting, or even a different period of time, just seems wrong from the off.

Sadly, I also agree with this. Rapture was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This whole, “Wait! There’s another city!” thing smacks of desperation. I still recall the exaltation I felt during the intro cut-scene, my first glimpse of Rapture, my growing realization that Bioshock might very well be something different, or “special.” I mean Cube was awesome, but Cube 2: Hypercube? Come on…

That was also the complexity that made them sell like annotated copies of War and Peace, though.

Bioshock was an incredibly fun, thoughtfull, high quality shooter. It wasn’t trying to be anything else, despite what people thought System Shock 2’s spiritual successor should be. The best game I’ve played for a long time, possibly the best since…System Shock 2.

@diebroken: I LOL’d. Exactly the problem. Bioshock was a great idea turned into a bad copy of a generic FPS. But for the clueless 360 generation it would of gotten nowhere, Levine should be strung up….